


A Love Story Better Than Twilight

by AnonymousTheThird, RestrictedIntellectualProperty (badwolfgrapesoda)



Category: Original Work, Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: All Vampires Are Gay, BAMF Bella, Buffy the Vampire Slayer References, Character Bashing, Crack, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Feminist Themes, Gay dads, Gender Changes, Humor, Lesbian Vampires, M/M, Name Changes, Neo-Paganism, Parody, Religious Fanaticism, Same-Gender Parenting, Sarcasm, Trans Character, Transgender, Vampire Slayer Bella, Witchcraft, vampirism is actually a traditional literary metaphor for homosexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-06-03 18:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6620713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousTheThird/pseuds/AnonymousTheThird, https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfgrapesoda/pseuds/RestrictedIntellectualProperty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young vampire slayer Belladonna Moorcock leaves her childhood home to live with her father in the small, dreary town of Forks and fulfil her destiny. There she must face Christian fanaticism, socially-inept Buffy fans, stalkers with crushes, and frustratingly cute vampires.</p>
<p>Gross.</p>
<p>Oh, and something’s going around killing people that she should probably take care of at some point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prisoner of Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> The authors would like to say that they are sorry, but they are also morally opposed to lying.
> 
> We wish we could give a solid, respectable reason for the creation of this narrative, but the sole cause behind it is that we are both very gay, trans and nerdy, and were convinced that what Twilight needed to make it a palatable story was pagan vampire slayers and lesbians.
> 
> Please don’t judge us.
> 
> Sincerely,  
> AnonymousTheThird and badwolfgrapesoda
> 
> PS Team Alice ftw

**Chapter 1: Prisoner of Destiny**

My mother had always told me this day would come. I would miss the comforting heat of Phoenix, where vampires rarely strayed, but it couldn’t be helped.

“Here’s your toothbrush, and don’t forget your—” Rain lowered her voice to a whisper before continuing, “… _stake_.”

“And don’t let the negative thoughts corrupt you, man,” my mom’s boyfriend, Bill, said from behind his pink John Lennon glasses.

I am always corrupted by negative thoughts. I took the stake (and the toothbrush) and stuffed them in my suitcase along with my multiple raincoats and clothing in various shades of grey and black. Secretly, I suspected Bill was eager to get away from my “bad vibes” and “violent desires.” Personally, I didn’t see the harm in my Gothic metal and desire to smash vampires’ skulls in. It was what I had been training for since birth. It was my family legacy. He was the one who got into a relationship with a vampire slayer.

“Goodbye, my sweet Bella.” My mother gave me a bone-crushing hug that made me feel like my ribs were going to crack.

“Yeah… bye…” I managed to stutter while gasping for breath. As she pulled away, I bit the inside of my cheek when I realised that my white foundation had smeared all over the front of her pink shirt.

“Hey, dude, what happened to your face? It’s all… healthy-looking and stuff,” Bill observed, peering over my mum’s shoulder at me.

“Uh… gotta go!” I snatched up my suitcase and waved my boarding pass at the disinterested woman behind the counter. “Goddess bless you, child!” Rain waved at me forlornly, tears dripping off the end of her nose. It was gross.

“Mum!” I hissed. “Save the witch stuff for home!” And with that, I left the last remnants of my childhood behind, swapping the happy memories for the uncomfortable embrace of destiny (and the plane seats). Good riddance.

The flight attendants kept trying to throw peanuts at me over the journey. Like Bill, they seemed to think my pale skin and sullen expression were evidence of a lack of nutrition rather than the fact that I was the saviour of the known world. I wondered if people in Forks would feel the same way about my complexion. Being the single dreariest town in the United States, I was bound to fit right in.

The only thing I wasn’t positively jumping for joy about with my “fresh start” was staying with my dad, Chuck. The guy was such a Jesus-lover that he slept with his giant crucifix under his pillow. It probably weighed as much as I did. The last time I had visited him in Forks was when I was fourteen. I’d taken a taxi to his house and he’d thrown holy water over me as soon as I walked through the door, to “wash away the taint of my evil pagan mother.” I had vowed never to return. Honestly, I don’t know how my parents had ever produced me.

When I could no longer see anything but thick, ominous clouds outside my window, I knew that we were almost there. I stuffed the multiple bags of peanuts into my jeans pocket, and the flight blanket down my shirt. Let them think that their force-feeding had worked, to great effect.

At least this time, Chuck was here to greet me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. He didn’t seem to be carrying anything with him that could contain significant amounts of liquid, so I figured that, for the moment at least, I was safe.

“Hey,” said Chuck, stroking his moustache.

“Hey,” I said.

“You’re here,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Right, then.” He picked up one of my bags and started walking out to his car. One thing I can say about my dad is that we are around the same skill level when it comes to communication.

Even without the arrival gift of holy water, it became clear that I still wouldn’t manage to stay dry for very long in this puny little town. The sky rained, the trees rained, and even the ground rained. This, at least, seemed to be a constant from my suppressed childhood memories of the place.

So too, was the smell of farts and doughnuts that always filled Chuck’s police cruiser. I battled with myself internally for a few seconds, before deciding that dousing myself with yet more rain was marginally better than leaving the windows closed and asphyxiating. The drive back to my dad’s house was tense and silent, but I had expected that. Between his fanatical religious beliefs and my pagan-vampire-slayer upbringing, we didn’t have many safe subjects to talk about.

As we turned onto our street, Chuck made a heroic effort to bridge the gap.

“So… Nice weather, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said flatly, and then nearly swallowed my tongue at the first sight of my childhood home. Dad had renovated. Crosses ranging from the size of a small dog to one nearly twice as tall as Chuck were hanging on the outside of the house, partially obscuring the mural of doves, fish and what appeared to be a large group of disciples lining up to wash Jesus’s feet.

Chuck glanced at my stunned expression. “Pretty great, isn’t it? I finished it just in time for your homecoming.”

“That’s… nice,” I said evenly. I took note of the complete lack of depictions of Mary, either Virgin or Magdalen, which I could only assume was to spite my mother and her insistences of her place as a Christian embodiment of the Divine Feminine.

“If that doesn’t keep the nasty bloodsuckers out, I don’t know what will,” Chuck said. He slammed the car door cheerfully and went to fetch my suitcases from the boot, whistling through his teeth. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands and followed him up the driveway. This was going to be more painful than I had imagined. I was so focused on resisting the urge to fall down and beat my fists on the ground that I didn’t say a word to Chuck about not needing a man to carry my bags.

“I assume you’ll want your old room?” he said, turning the key in the front door.

“Sure, I guess,” I said. As far as I was aware, there weren’t any other available rooms in the house.

“Good,” he said. The door swung open onto my childhood home. “Um… welcome back.”

The inside of the house wasn’t quite as terrifying as the outside, but there was a papier-mâché scene of the three wise men and the baby Jesus on the dining table (still no Mary). Oh, and a shot gun over the doorway.

He moved to pick up my bags again to take them into the house.

“No, dad, it’s fine!” I said quickly, trying not to sound panicked. I picked up my bags and rushed for the safety of my bedroom. Once inside, I kicked the door shut with my black combat boots and fell against it, breathing heavily. To my relief, my room was relatively free of the imposing zealous religiosity that had invaded the rest of the building. _Relatively_ , because he had very conspicuously left a Bible on my bedside table.

After a few minutes, I kicked off my shoes and knelt down to open my suitcase, digging through the layers of clothes, stakes and bottles of holy water, blessed for me by my mother, to remove the false bottom. I prised it away carefully to reveal my most prized and secret possessions – my diary and signed One Direction t-shirt. No one must ever know about my treasures. No one.

First things first: I grabbed my penknife and the Bible and began carving out a space to hide my diary. Blasphemy, but hopefully Chuck would never open it while I was here. After all, he had plenty of his own, bigger, older and fuller of notes handwritten by men as batty as he was. I stashed my beloved t-shirt under the mattress for safekeeping, frowning as it sloshed beneath my hand. _I guess I just found out where all the holy water went_.

Finally, I took up armfuls of my clothes and stakes, and tossed them all over the room. Now it felt a little more like my bedroom at home.

If I was lucky, it might even keep Chuck out.

*

The next morning was a typical morning in Forks: grey, gloomy and damp. Chuck that morning was a typical Chuck. When I stumbled into the kitchen, pawing at the fridge like a hungry bear, he grunted incoherently at me and continued to drink his coffee in silence. I poured milk into a bowl of conventional flavourless cereal product and sat opposite him, glancing up at him warily. He read over the newspaper. I ate my cereal.

“People are being killed,” he said, not looking up from the open page.

“Good for them,” I said.

“Probably by vampires,” he said.

“Oh.”

He glanced up at me then. “You gonna do something about that?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t actually told him about my mother’s prophecy: the one that had wound me up in this dreary little town to take my first steps of independence as a young vampire slayer. You can’t really talk to fundamentalist Christian dads about stuff like that.

He stared at me pointedly, as if to say, “Well?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” I replied flatly. “Are you going to do something about that ugly moustache?”

We finished our respective activities in silence. Then Chuck announced that it was time for my first day of school. I decided not to point out that my first day of school had already been carried out when I was five. Instead, I slung my school bag over my shoulder and told him, “I’m ready.”

We trudged out to the car, and I once again prepared myself for the smell. I wondered if I could hunt down a bike from somewhere (anywhere). Thankfully, the drive to school didn’t take very long. At first glance, I actually mistook the high school for a prison, with its grey concrete structure, tiny windows and barbed wire fences. It really was more like a prison than a school, but then, I was more like a prisoner of destiny than a student.

“Have a good day,” Chuck said half-heartedly. He had been absentmindedly rubbing his moustache for the entire journey. Maybe I’d upset him more than I intended. Good. I’d found his weakness.

I hopped out of the police cruiser and breathed sweet, fresh air, wondering if I would have to talk to other people in order to hunt down the front office. Luckily, there was a large cardboard sign that said, “FRONT OFFICE” duct taped to the ugly-looking building not twenty-five metres away.

I pushed open the glass door and walked in, instantly shivering. Despite the weather, the air-conditioning seemed to have been perpetually set to “freezing.” I walked up to the desk and coughed awkwardly. A short woman with messy brown hair and a splotchy face glanced up at me, wearing a cornered expression.

“Hello?” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Can anyone?” I muttered.

“I’m sorry, darling?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Umm… my name is Bella Moorcock. I’m a new student here. Can I… have a time table?”

“Bella…?” she said, typing into the old desktop computer in front of her. “Hmm… Belladonna Moorcock? Is that the one?”

I cringed at the sound of my full name. “Yeah…” I said. “Yeah, that’s me.”

The woman tapped a few buttons on her ancient looking keyboard, and the dusty printer whirred to life. It took several excruciating minutes for the machine to cough and sputter its way through my timetable. I leaned in through the window separating the office booth from the rest of the building and snatched it straight out of the printer, then marched off before she could talk to me again.

As I stormed through the doors, I slammed into a short, pimply boy with spiky hair and large glasses and he fell to the ground in a heap. I gave him the Glare of Witches while he scrambled to pick up his iPad, 3DS and shiny new phone.

“OMG, sorry bae!” The boy gasped, clasping his numerous electronics to his chest. He sidled around to peer over my shoulder at my timetable.

“Gasp! We’re in all the same classes! That’s totally cray-cray! I’m Mikerictyler Cronewkie.” He said this very fast in a breathless voice.

“Whoopee,” I said sarcastically.

“We’re going to be BFFLs!” he announced happily, bouncing up and down on his feet.

“Sure, whatever,” I said. “How do I get to class?”

“You’re a n00b, aren’t you?”

I stared at him. “I’m a what?”

“OMG, you’re even a n00b at being a n00b!” He seemed to find this very amusing, and snorted a few times amidst his giggling.

“Look here, nerd,” I said, closing my fingers around his neck and lifting him clean off his feet while he gurgled and squirmed, “I didn’t travel across America with the intention of slaying vampires so that I could be called a… “n00b” by some scrawny little twerp.”

His eyes grew big in awe rather than a lack of oxygen. “You’re a vampire slayer? That’s so cool! Wow, you’re just like Buffy!”

I rolled my eyes and dropped him. He fell into his familiar heap, gadgets flung everywhere. Immediately, he hopped back to his feet.

“I’ll show you to class!” he said enthusiastically. “I’ll show you to every class ever! Will you train me, sensei?”

“Sure thing,” I said in a monotone. “Lesson 1: Don’t talk to me, or in my presence, except when I’m asking you a question, which will be never.”

Our first class together (oh, joy) was P.E. My usual apathy lifted to something vaguely resembling happiness when I realised that we were playing roller derby. Our school team was somewhat unfortunately called “The Fabulous Fucking Forks”. It seemed that the faculty hadn’t noticed the euphemism. Mikerictyler Cronewkie’s beaming face fell slightly.

“I totally suck at sports,” he sighed, and trudged off to get changed. The P.E. teacher jogged over and gave me a uniform and a pair of scruffy-looking skates.

“Maybe you should sit this lesson out,” she told me. “We usually advise students to take their skates home and clean them thoroughly for, you know,” she lowered her voice as though she were confiding a secret, “athlete’s foot.”

Gross.

I sat on the benches by the edge of the gym, and glared at each and every student as they roller derby-ed past in their “Fabulous Fucking Forks” uniforms. All of a sudden, there was a tap on my shoulder.

“Hello,” said Mikerictyler. He was not wearing his gym clothes. “I thought you might be lonely, sitting all by yourself on your first day, so I forged a note from my mom saying that I could sit out of P.E. Now we can spend the period together!”

Oh no. “What did the note say?” I asked, trying not to sound mildly impressed. Which I most definitely was not.

“Oh, that I have athlete’s foot.”

Gross.

I subtly edged away from him. Despite his efforts, I managed to dodge his attempts at conversation. I was so busy focusing on how annoying he was that I was too late to dodge something else of an entirely different nature – a sweaty kneepad to the face.

“What the hell?” I exploded upwards as if from a rocket launcher, ready to beat the snivelling cowards until they begged for mercy.

“Wait!” a girl with curly brown hair held her hands up in surrender. “Sorry about that. We were aiming for him.” She jerked her chin at Mikerictyler.

Well, perhaps I could forgive her then. I sat back down again.

“Are you okay?” Mikerictyler gazed at me concernedly.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled. “Why do they hate you so much, anyway? Apart from the obvious, I mean.”

“Who, Jasmine and Anita?” Mikerictyler looked surprised. “They’re my besties! They love messing with me.” He laughed awkwardly, before waving to the curly-haired girl. “Better luck next time, Jas!”

The period came to an end and we made our way to the cafeteria. Mikerictyler was droning on about something, but I’d long ago tuned him out. We were served some sort of unspecified blob of meat substance, and sat down at a table. I felt something wet and squishy underneath me, and got up to find a string of chewing gum dangling from my tight black jeans. I hate cafeterias. And schools. And life.

“Hey nerd,” Jasmine said, plopping down between the two of us and punching Mikerictyler in the arm.

“Ow,” said Mikerictyler. He rubbed his arm exaggeratedly, like it was all a big joke, but when he turned away I saw him screw up his face in pain. Anita sat down on the other side of me and pulled out a large sketchpad without saying anything. She flipped through a number of pages before stopping on a half-finished depiction of what appeared to be a demon knitting a scarf with its own intestines. She then opened a box of fancy pencils and began shading. I noticed that the black and red pencils were practically stubs compared to the rest of them.

“So, new person,” Jasmine turned to stare at me intensely, leaning her chin on her hand, “who are you and what is your life story? Don’t leave anything out.”

I sighed and opened my mouth, but before I could say a word Mikerictyler interrupted, “Her name is Bella! She’s in a bunch of my classes and she just moved here from Phoenix, which is weird because she’s super pale and all the people in Phoenix are supposed to be really tanned, and –”

I decided to tune him out again and picked at my meat blob. It wobbled ominously.

“So, Bella,” Jasmine said, looking at me with a horribly bright and intrigued smile. I stopped inspecting the fleshy substance on my plate and looked at her with disinterest. “Is that short for something?”

My eye twitched. “No,” I said flatly.

“Yes it is!” Mikerictyler announced. “Her full name is Belladonna Moorcock! I saw it on her timetable when I ran into her.”

Anita smirked without looking up from her creepy artwork.

“Belladonna?” Jasmine said. “That’s such a pretty name!”

“I’m named after a deadly poison,” I pointed out.

Jasmine’s smile faltered. “Well, yeah, but it has a nice flower, doesn’t it?”

I grunted in response. I was already regretting sitting at this stupid table with these stupid people, and their inane attempts at conversation.

“Was it totally awesome in Phoenix? How come you moved here?” she pressed. Did this girl never stop talking?

I stabbed my lunch and wished that I was stabbing the heart of a vampire instead. It looked about as gross. I’d certainly rather be erasing the demonic scourge of the earth than be a part of this pointless discourse. I raised my head, hoping that against all odds some random vampires would appear so that I could slay them.

And then…. there they were.

There were four of them, gliding into the lowly cafeteria with the grace of wildcats stalking prey. My slayer instincts went off like sirens at the sight of them making their way majestically to collect their meat blobs. The first was your typical butch lesbian – her dark, curly hair was shoved under a beanie, and her muscled arms stuck out of a ragged denim jacket with the sleeves cut off. The hand not holding her lunch tray was entwined with the hand of the second vampire, who looked like she belonged on the cover of a mainstream magazine. _Her_ hair was long, blonde, and hung in perfect curls. She seemed like the sort of person who colour-matched her handbag with her shoes.

The third vampire was… sweet. That was really the only word for it. He was almost comically delicate, standing behind the butch one. There was something about him that I had never seen before in a vampire, and it took me a few moments to figure out what it was – he was _awkward_. Being hellspawn tended to give you confidence. I almost didn’t want to hurt him.

_For terrible creatures of the underworld, they’re awfully pretty_ , I thought to myself. _No, bad Bella_. I shook my head and stood up, the legs of my chair scraping on the floor, so that I could better see the exits and calculate my chances of eradicating all the vampires before they killed anyone.

I craned my neck to see the fourth vampire coming into the room, and nearly tripped over my chair when my knees suddenly decided they didn’t want to hold me up. She was beautiful. Her short dark hair was spiked at the edges and fell across soft porcelain skin. She was waiting in line behind the others, hopping from foot to foot so fast that she blurred slightly, then visibly stopped and reined herself back in. The skirt of her dress – a kind of modern-Victorian thing that was probably expensive and handmade – quivered from the halted motion. She looked up suddenly and our eyes met across the cafeteria. For a moment she seemed uncertain, but then she smiled at me, before turning away to collect her lunch. I found myself smiling back, but by that point she wasn’t looking anymore.

“Uh… Bella?”

I blinked and remembered my companions. Jasmine was staring at me with a look of considerable concern.

“Are you okay?”

I sat down abruptly. “Um… yeah, I was just, uh…”

“Looking at the Cullings,” Anita said matter-of-factly. “It happens to the best of us.”

“No, I was –” I fell silent, realizing that I couldn’t discuss my sacred calling as a slayer with them. Anyway, that kind of had been what I was doing.

“Don’t worry, Bella,” Mikerictyler piped up. “Everyone in this school has a Culling fantasy. I know that I –” He blushed and twiddled his thumbs awkwardly. “Anyway, they’ll never date you.”

I found myself oddly annoyed by this statement. I didn’t want to date a vampire, least of all a Culling, but why shouldn’t I if I did want to? Wasn’t I good enough for her – I mean, them? Them. Them in general.

Surreptitiously, I glanced over my shoulder to look at the Cullings. They were now sitting at a table and had been joined by another vampire with weird hair. He was blocking my view of the spiky-haired girl (I refused to think of her as the cute one). I scowled at him.

As if he could sense my hatred, he looked up and, at the sight of me glaring, grinned sleazily. I gave him the finger and turned away pointedly. I tried poking my meat blob again, but it wasn’t fun anymore. Mikerictyler got out of his chair and weaselled in between Anita and I.

“So, do you think they’re vampires?” he whispered loudly. It was so loud I wasn’t even sure it could be called a whisper.

“Shhh,” I hissed. “Not where they can hear us!”

He sighed dramatically. “Who, Nita and Jas?”

He scooted in even closer; I could smell his peanut-butter breath. “Is this better?”

I rolled my eyes and leaned away from him. “Definitely not.”

“So, do you?” He wasn’t going to give up. I glanced back at the Cullings’ table and saw, to my disgust, that the one with funny hair was still staring at me and grinning like an idiot.

“I don’t _think_ they’re vampires,” I said irritably. “A slayer just knows.”

“You’re not talking about Buffy again, are you?” Jasmine sneered. “Go back to Tumblr and leave Bella alone.”

Mikerictyler opened his mouth, probably to defend Buffy, but the bell for the end of lunch rang. Anita closed her art book and got up without a word. Jasmine followed after her with a friendly smile and a wave in my direction, not seeming to mind when I didn’t return the gesture.

“It’s time for Biology, Bella,” Mikerictyler said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go, sensei!”

“First of all, don't touch me,” I said, removing his hand. “Second of all, if you’re going to be my sidekick or… whatever, it’s Head Slayer, not sensei.”

“Right on, Slayer Supreme! So… they’re vampires, aren’t they?”

I sighed. “Yes, they’re vampires,” I said through gritted teeth. “And they have _extremely good hearing_ , you dolt.”

“Oh. Right.” Mikerictyler looked around sheepishly. “Ooops.”

“Third,” I went on, “as my sidekick, it’s your duty to tell me everything you know about the Cullings.”

I looked over at the table where the Cullings had been sitting, to see that all of them had already left, except for the creepy one who was still grinning at me.

“Start with him. Who’s that?” I asked. “Is he usually this weird?”

“Yeah, but… not like this,” Mikerictyler said. “Maybe he has a crush on you. His name’s Edgar. He’s in our Biology class.”

Gross.

*

On the way to class, Mikerictyler rattled off the rest of the information he had on the Cullings.

“They’ve been going to the school at least as long as I’ve been here,” he said. “Everyone knows them and thinks they’re beautiful, but we can’t sit with them. They don’t make friends. I think they’re foster siblings or something because the lesbians – oh, that’s Emma and Rosaline – are, like, together.”

“What about the spiky haired one?” I asked.

“Elise?” he said. “What about her?”

“Is she also…?” I asked. “Y’know…”

“What? Gay?” Mikerictyler asked. “I don’t know. She’s never been in any relationships as long as she’s been going here. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” I said quickly.

We walked in silence for a few moments, and I thought the conversation was over. Then Mikerictyler blurted, “The other vampire is Casper. I have three classes with him, and he’s really sweet; you would never know he was a vampire by looking at him, and this one time I dropped my Buffy pencil case and he picked it up for me –” He had to pause and gasp for breath. I realised that he was red-faced and puffing like a steam engine, and decided to take my schoolbag away from him. He had insisted on carrying it for me, but perhaps the huge pile of books and stakes inside had proved too much for him.

We entered the Biology classroom just as the teacher, Mr Banner, was taking the roll. He was hulking and hugely muscular, with dyed green hair – he might have been intimidating if it weren’t for his large, nerdy glasses.

I shuffled up to his desk and cleared my throat.

“Ah, you must be Belladonna, the new student,” he smiled, consulting the roll. “Making friends, I hope?”

“You betcha!” Mikerictyler said enthusiastically. I stifled the urge to roll my eyes.

“That’s good to hear,” Mr Banner said. “And now you can make another new friend! Let’s see, I’ve put you next to… ah, yes. Edgar Culling.”

No. Anything but this.

I stared at him mutely, begging him with my eyes to announce that he’d misread the paper in front of him. No dice. Mikerictyler looked at me sympathetically. I dragged my feet and my bag as I trudged to the back of the room, where the Mouth of Hell was already leering at me.

I sat down on the edge of my chair, as far away from him as possible. Mr Banner came and gave me a textbook before announcing to the class that we were studying cellular anatomy. We’d already covered this in my advanced class in Phoenix, but I took notes anyway. Anything to distract me from Edgar’s creepy staring. He was practically burning holes in the side of my head.

I could hear him breathing oddly loudly. When I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, I saw his nostrils flaring and I realised with horror that he was sniffing me. I knew he was a vampire, but did he have to be so weird about it?

I shuffled even further away from him, balancing precariously on about three millimetres of chair. It felt like the lesson went on for hours, but finally the bell rang and I was out of my chair and fled without looking back.

Luckily, all the people in my next class were humans. I sat quietly and daydreamed about tying Edgar to a cross and staking him multiple times, then beheading him and burning him for good measure.

At the end of the day, I went to the front office to ask them to shorten my name to “Bella” on the roll. I had suffered through enough utterances of my full name today to last me a lifetime. But when I walked through the door, Edgar was already there. I ducked behind a potted plant. He was leaning against the wall and flashing his creepy smile at the office ladies. “Yes… AP Lit, Math II and History,” he was saying, in what he probably thought was a charming tone. A shiver went through me. Those were all my classes. Surely he wasn’t…?

My whole body sagged in relief as I heard the women telling him that the classes he was asking about were already full.

“Never mind then,” he said with clenched teeth. “I can see that it’s impossible. Thank you so much for your help.”

On his way out, he bumped into Elise Culling walking through the door.

“Edgar, what are you doing, you lummox?”

“Nothing,” he snarled angrily, and stormed past her with a manner that suggested he was still in nursery school.

I cautiously emerged from my hiding place, brushing leaves out of my hair. I tried to make my way to the front desk as inconspicuously as possible, but I hadn’t taken two steps before Elise was staring right at me. I felt the skin of my face turn a shade darker than chalk white – in fact, fifty shades darker.

Elise smiled, her amber eyes sparkling. I wanted to turn and flee before I could do something stupid like stake her in the office, or alternatively, smile back at her, but I was frozen. Perhaps this was some weird vampire power?

“Hi,” she said, and I managed to make a noise that sounded something like, “Gah.” “Did you have a good first day?”

“Um,” I replied intelligently. “Nice to meet you. I’m sure we’re going to be great _friends_.” As she said this, she leaned forward and touched my hand. I felt something… strange. It was like I was having an emotion other than annoyance.

My blood turned to ice as she whispered in my ear, “I know why you’re here. We can help you.”

I jolted back. She smiled at me again, turned and skipped out of the room.

_What?_


	2. Mikerictyler Does a Helpful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, sorry for the long wait, we're really bad at organising stuff. We'll try to be more persistent from now on though, so hopefully it won't be basically another year before the next chapter is up.

Edgar wasn’t there the next day. I didn’t care.

It wasn’t raining anymore. Instead, there was an atmosphere of vague dampness. It was probably my imagination, but I thought I could smell rot fumigating in the weak sun. It was Forks, so I probably couldn’t expect it to be nice.

As soon as I got home from school – it was a long walk back, but I couldn’t stand another minute inside Chuck’s stink-mobile – I noticed the alarmingly large number of Skype messages on my laptop. The first one was a perfectly civilized, ‘Hey, sweetheart. Skype me when you can <3 <3 <3.’ I scrolled down to the bottom to see the latest message. It read, ‘HAVE YOU BEEN EATEN BY VAMPIRES?????? I’M GETTING ON A PLANE IN AN HOUR IF YOU DON’T REPLY AND THEN ALL OUR SAVINGS WILL BE GONE!!! <3 <3 <3 Love from Mom.’ It had been written fifty-six minutes ago.

I typed, ‘DON’T FREAK OUT’ and tried calling her. She picked up within two seconds.

“Belladonna!” she gasped. “I’ve been so worried! I thought maybe your father had tried to exorcise you!”

“Not yet,” I said wryly. She must’ve been really scared; she was clutching her prayer beads in one hand and a stick of incense in the other. The latter was waving precariously close to her bushy hair.

“So how is Forks?” she asked, dropping her pagan paraphernalia and pulling up a chair. “Do you like the school? Did you make any friends?”

I thought back on my day. Mikerictyler had once again trailed me to every class and enthusiastically held my books for me whenever he could. Jasmine had continued to be bright and friendly despite no similar sentiment on my part, and Anita… hadn’t really said anything other than, “The fragility of human conscience, duh,” when I had tentatively asked her what her drawing was about.

“Well…” I said. “I think people are _trying_ to make friends with me.”

This seemed to delight my mother, and her pixelated face beamed at me from the computer screen.

“That’s so great!” she said. “Bill will be so happy to hear! I’ll call him over to say hi! BILL! BELLA MADE FRIENDS!”

I could hear footsteps coming closer and closer, before Bill’s head loomed towards the screen. He scribbled something on a small whiteboard hanging around his neck. He showed it to my mother, and then held it up to the screen so I could see it too.

It said, in large, scribbly letters, ‘THAT’S SO PSYCHEDELIC, SUNFLOWER SEED!’ He scribbled again, ‘I’M DOING THE SILENCE CHALLENGE TO FEED ORPHANED MEERKATS.’

I gave him an unenthusiastic thumbs up and tried to smile. It came out as more of a grimace, but this seemed to please Bill regardless. He pottered off-screen and I soon heard the irritating sound of our top-of-the-range blender and juicer. After an awkward silence, I said, “So what have you been doing?”

“Nothing much,” Rain said cheerfully. “There’s this cute little organic vegetable stand we’ve been to a couple of times, with a trust box!”

My mother loved trust boxes.

“Oh, and yesterday we got a picture of the meerkats Bill’s sponsoring!” she continued. “We had some great silent sex to celebrate. You wouldn’t think it would make much of a difference, but it really –”

“Ew, Mom!”

“There’s nothing ‘ew’ about sex, Belladonna,” my mother lectured. “It’s natural.”

“Yeah, but I don’t need to hear every detail,” I muttered.

“Anyway, how’s your father?” Rain asked, her tone suddenly becoming suspicious. “What’s he… been up to?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh gods, you should see the house. It has more religious imagery than the Sistine Chapel.”

We both laughed. Making fun of Chuck was one of the few entirely safe topics between us, and hence a favourite pastime.

“Also, I’m pretty sure there’s Christian holy water in my mattress,” I said, cringing.

“Ugh, that stuff gives me a rash,” said my mother. “I’m sorry about this, honeybun. I wish we could have come with you instead of sending you off alone, but alas, the Great Prophecy forbids it.”

Ah yes, the Great Prophecy, as predicted by my flowerchild vegan hippy mother.

_One shall journey to where paths divulge_   
_And rid the land of an unsightly bulge._   
_She must leave those behind her whom she holds dear_   
_And find a gal pal amongst those whom she fears._   
_From this challenge, a slayer shall rise_   
_And she shall spell the Great Evil’s demise._

Needless to say, the words were my mother’s work. Any other self-respecting witch wouldn’t have felt the need to adapt her prophecies to poetry.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Secretly, I was glad to have a bit of freedom, even if I did have to stay with my dad. At least here I didn’t have to meditate four hours a day – and Chuck didn’t have any sex, silent or otherwise. I had a sudden vision of him and my mother making me, and immediately dispelled it to the depths of the underworld.

“BELLA!”

Speaking of the Devil. From the sounds of it, Chuck was standing at the bottom of the stairs, yelling up to me.

“WHAT?”

“Pardon!” Rain interrupted.

“IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO MAKE DINNER!” Chuck called.

I sighed. “I’ve got to go and teach Dad about the abolition of gender roles.”

“Bye, Eeyore-pie!” Rain blew me a kiss.

“Don’t ever call me that again,” I said, with great dignity, and shut my laptop. I knew she wouldn’t listen.

*

Dinner was a passive-aggressive spaghetti Bolognese – made with real meat because my mother wasn’t there to stop me. I’d had to go out and buy the ingredients myself, since the few items of edibles Chuck _did_ keep in the pantry and fridge were dangerously beyond their expiry date.

Afterwards, I left Chuck to do the washing-up and flopped down on my waterbed. It sloshed ominously, as if it knew that I didn’t share its Christian values. I closed my eyes, trying to relax, but the words of the Great Prophecy kept pounding in my head, along with the image of a certain girl who I was absolutely not attracted to.

No. I was the slayer. There was no time to lay around definitely not thinking about girls who absolutely weren’t cute in the slightest. I took the Holy Christian Bible from my bedside table and removed the precious diary, then went to the desk and sat down, clicking open my pen with conviction. It was time to figure out my plan of action.

_Problem: Killings in Forks, most likely the work of vampires._

_Likely suspects: The Cullings._

_What to do: Find out more about the Cullings, and when I gather all the intel I can, kill them all. ~~Except possibly Elise.~~_

_How to do this:_

I paused here. How was I going to dig up information about the Cullings without attracting unwanted attention to myself? Elise already seemed to know something was up with me, judging by that confrontation after school yesterday. _“We can help you.”_ What was that supposed to mean? Help me with what? I shook my head. I would worry about that later.

‘NO. WORRY ABOUT IT NOW,’ insisted my inner Rain. I thumped my pillow. Mom meant well, but sometimes it felt like she just stood there and criticised me while I did everything. She was such a… _Watcher_. I stashed away my diary and carefully unwrapped my 1D poster. They always gave me inspiration. I stared at Harry’s beautiful face – and then it came to me! All I had to do was send Mikerictyler to fetch me information. He was the best minion I’d ever had. Resolving to inform him of his mission at school tomorrow, I kissed Zane’s cheek goodnight and went to sleep with as light a heart as was possible for an angsty teenage Slayer.

*

“A real mission of my very own? Cool beans!” Mikerictyler exclaimed, hugging my Literature textbook to his scrawny chest. He was bouncing on his toes and gazing at me as though I’d just told him I was the incarnation of God. Which, y’know, I very well could be, but it was making me uncomfortable, so I told him to cease and desist, and to stop squeezing my book so tightly. It was getting wrinkled.

“This is serious stuff,” I told him. “The Cullings could be dangerous.”

“Yeah… dangerous,” Mikerictyler said dreamily, tugging on his shirt collar as Casper and Elise walked past. I followed his line of sight, just as Elise happened to glance my way. She winked at me in a suspiciously flirtatious manner. I whirled around and glared at the wall of lockers.

“Hey, Bella,” Mikerictyler tapped my shoulder. “What happened to your face? You’ve gone all red.”

“It’s sunburn!” I snapped.

“But there’s no sun in—”

“Don’t you have a mission to be focussing on?” I demanded.

“Sir, yes sir!” he said. “I mean ma’am. Yes, ma’am!”

I sighed and slammed the locker door shut, and we made our way to AP Lit. Mikerictyler had a look of intense determination the whole way to class. It looked like he was constipated.

As we reached the classroom – I literally had my hand on the doorknob – he suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead.

“Darn it!” he swore. “I forgot my lucky pencil!”

I allowed him to dump both our textbooks in my arms, and he scurried off back to his locker, looking like a baby gazelle that didn’t know how to use its legs yet. I sighed. He was probably the worst person in the school to carry out a stealth mission.

“Hi, Bella,” said Elise right next to my ear, and I jumped a foot in the air. Speaking of stealth…

“Can I walk you to class?” she asked hopefully.

‘It’s right there,’ I wanted to say. What I actually said was, “Uhhh.”

“Superb!” she beamed. She linked arms with me and escorted me two steps to the door. I was helpless as she opened said door and dragged me, defenceless victim, to a pair of desks.

“Come sit next to me!” Elise said brightly. “No one besides my family ever sits next to me.”

Damn it. Now what was I supposed to do?

I sat next to her.

Mikerictyler bounced through the door and looked crestfallen at the sight of the two full seats. For once I was glad of his ignorance regarding social etiquette, because he immediately shrugged and started pushing an extra desk and chair onto the end of mine. I tried to ignore Elise’s look of disappointment, just visible out of the corner of my eye.

“How come you didn’t save me a seat?” Mikerictyler stage-whispered.

“I was kidnapped,” I whispered back out of the side of my mouth.  
Mikerictyler pulled a page out of his notebook and started scribbling something on it as the teacher stepped forward and started the class.

“Guess what time of term it is?” the teacher said, with a horrifyingly wide smile.

“Holiday time?” a student suggested with cautious optimism.

“It’s time to choose your teams for the end-of-term group assignment and presentation!” she said. “And by choose, I mean be assigned, because you’re stuck with the people next to you!” She cackled wickedly and went to pass out two sheets of paper to each collection of desks.

I felt the walls close in around me, but it turned out to just be Mikerictyler’s hand passing me a message.

_Now we can observe her up close! Nice going, Slayer Supreme! –M_

I quickly scrunched it up before Elise could notice and gave Mikerictyler a falsely confident thumbs up.

Our teacher dropped the two pieces of paper in front of Elise, who placed them politely before me so we could all have a read of them.

_For this assignment, you must prepare a group presentation consisting of a spoken component, assisted by a visual aid (i.e., PowerPoint, video, poster). Apply a theory of reading to between 1-3 classical texts from the list provided. You will be assessed on how well you_ blah blah blah; I stopped reading and went to the second sheet of paper with the list of texts and immediately singled out every one that had anything to do with vampires.

“I think we should do these ones,” I said innocently, holding up my selections for Elise to see.

“Christabel, Carmilla and Dracula…” she said slowly, and raised one elegant eyebrow. “Interesting choices.”

“Aren’t they about vam –” Mikerictyler yelped as my foot met his shin under the table.

“Well… I’m happy to do those ones,” Elise said. I tried to read her expression. It was difficult, but I thought I could detect a combination of annoyance, hope and curiosity. _Huh?_

“Yeah, sure,” Mikerictyler said. “I have, like, five film adaptions of Dracula. You should totally come over and watch them!”

“Yeah, that sounds spiffing!” Elise bit her lip and turned to me. “I mean, cool. Uh, if that’s okay with you, Bella.”

Her eyes were really pretty.

“Um,” I said coherently. “Yeah, great, that’s very yep.”

Mikerictyler was watching with interest. He smirked suddenly, as though he’d figured something out.

I mouthed ‘what?’ at him. He winked exaggeratedly. I resisted the urge to drop kick him out of the window.

The teacher cleared her throat at the front of the room. “Attention! I’ve put a list of your groups on the board. Before you leave, you’ll need to write what texts you’re planning on doing, and what theory you’re going to apply to them, next to your names.”

“I’ll do it!” Mikerictyler said quickly. He snatched our worksheets from the desk and hurried to the board.

“Did we discuss what theory we were doing?” Elise asked me.

“Don’t think so,” I mumbled.

The bell finally rang and we all started gathering our things. I grabbed Mikerictyler’s bag for him and carried it up to the front of the room, where he was still standing at the board.

“Oh, thanks!” he said, taking his bag. “This assignment is going to be so great! For the surveillance, obvs.”

Then he skipped out of the door with a, “Gotta get to Math!” over his shoulder. There was something about his smug grin that made me very suspicious.

I peered at the board and groaned. “That little shit…”

Next to our names and texts were two scrawled words: Queer Theory.

*

I entered the Math classroom with a truly murderous expression on my face. The low chatter that had filled the room was gone in an instant, and all eyes turned to me as I stomped in.

“Bella?” Jasmine whispered as I passed her. “You’re shaking the desks.”

I ignored her, my eyes scanning the seats for Mikerictyler so that I could go and wring his bony little neck. I caught sight of him and my blood ran cold. He was sitting next to Caspar Culling!

Mikerictyler caught my eye and gave me a thumbs up from under his arm. I seethed and tried to calm myself with the counting to ten technique. What came after six again? Luckily Caspar was looking out the window, so I felt safe flailing my arms and mouthing ‘what in the sweet kiss of death are you doing?’ Mikerictyler gave me an earnest look and mimed looking through a magnifying glass. I gave him my best ‘still furious but now with a side of confusion’ face. He responded by raising his eyebrows vigorously several times, jerking his head towards Caspar, who was somehow remaining oblivious, and finally exaggeratedly mouthing ‘MISSION’ at me.

I was about to attempt to convey through mime that this wasn’t what I had in mind when someone cleared their throat loudly from behind. I spun around and immediately felt my ears going red. The teacher was standing in front of her desk with a bemused expression. I realised I was still standing in between the rows of desks and hurriedly slid into an empty seat. I was going to kill Mikerictyler. But first, I had to do Math.

*

Throughout the lesson, I kept glancing at Mikerictyler to give him shots of my well-practiced death glares. Unfortunately, he appeared to be too busy staring at Caspar’s ear to notice any of them. At one point, I even caught sight of Caspar tossing his long, thick black hair over his shoulder, almost hitting Mikerictyler in the face. For his part, Mikerictyler looked as though he had been brushed by the wings of an angel. I was scandalised.

It seemed to take forever for the bell to ring, but when we went to lunch, I kinda wished it hadn’t, because the second we sat down, Mikerictyler started talking very fast and breathlessly about his ‘mission.’

“Caspar has three freckles on the left side of his neck, and he smells like fresh violets and honeysuckle, and at the end of the class he had a blue ink smudge on his thumb, and when I talked to him he smiled twelve times! What do you think that means?”

I lowered my fork, pushed the tray away, and stared him dead in the eyes.

“Mikerictyler Cronewkie,” I said, my voice low. “How – _exactly_ – does any of this help me confirm that the Cullings are responsible for the murders?”

Mikerictyler thought about this. After a few moments he said, in a very reasonable tone, “Well, I don’t think a murderer could smell that good.”

I tried not to groan. Gross.

“Look,” I said, trying to control my temper. “I’m going to need you to do a bit more than this if you really want to help me.”

“What’s he helping you do?”

My head snapped up. I had been so preoccupied by my frustration at Mikerictyler’s complete incompetence that I hadn’t noticed Jasmine and Anita approaching.

“And why are you getting _him_ to help you?” Jasmine asked, sitting down. “He’s useless.”

Mikerictyler laughed in agreement.

“My… English assignment,” I said. “We’re partners. For the final project.”

Jasmine whistled. “Good luck.”

It was at that moment that Mikerictyler decided to interject with, “Well, technically it’s a threesome because Elise Culling is doing it with us.”

I squinted at him. He genuinely hadn’t seemed to realise what else the word ‘threesome’ might imply.

“Wow, you got a _Culling_ into a group with you?” Jasmine sounded genuinely impressed. “How’d you manage that?”

“A sacrifice to the Elder Gods?” Anita suggested from behind her art diary.

“Something like that,” I said, hoping that that had been a joke.

“Hey, are you free tonight?” Mikerictyler asked. “Because if so, we should totally do the movie date with Elise tonight.”

Jasmine and Anita pricked up their ears at the mention of a date. They looked like puppies whose owners had just spilled a bag of treats on the floor. “Are you guys in a polyamorous relationship?” Jasmine gushed. “Because that’s so progressive and we are, like, totally supportive.”

“It’s not a date,” I said. “We’re doing an assignment.”

Jasmine looked disappointed. “Damn,” she sighed. “You guys would’ve made such a cute couple. Or… is there another word if it’s more than two people?”

“Triad?” Mikerictyler suggested.

“Definitely not,” I said firmly. _Kill me now._ It didn’t help that I was now trying to get the concepts of ‘date’ and ‘Elise’ far away from each other. Picturing Mikerictyler’s eager face in between us made it a bit better.

“So it’s settled then.” Mikerictyler swallowed the last bite of his yellow lunch goop that was masquerading as mashed potato, and got up from the table. To my horror, he began determinedly marching over to the Culling table.

“Oh. Em. Gee. What the fuck is he doing?” Jasmine murmured.

“There are some things that just aren’t done in this school,” Anita agreed as she coloured in a giant monster with a face resembling a vagina.

We all watched Mikerictyler walk up to Elise and start talking to her animatedly, occasionally waving his hands and pointing over at me. I ducked my head, but I couldn’t help observing that while the rest of the Culling gang were staring at him with surprise, Elise hadn’t taken her eyes off me the entire time. She caught me looking back from under my elbow and winked.

Suddenly, the idea of Mikerictyler sitting in between us on our ‘date’ didn’t seem like an adequate deterrent.


End file.
